I have been busy building guitars. I have been building the bodies and buying used necks for a while. It started out as “can I build a tele body” and has turned into something else.

I have been using wrap tail bridges on the last two builds. I really like the adjustability and look of a wrap tail bridge. It started out of necessity on a tele with a one piece maple body that I got from a family member. It had a severe curve in the large piece of maple.

The top loader bridge would not sit flush because of the concave nature of the maple block I was given. I couldn’t take anymore material off without risking the body being too thin.

I started building teles with some scrap lumber from the garage. Here are some photos of the first one that I finished.

This guitar was made from 6 pieces of oine 2×6 left over from some deck work. I finished this up and gave it to my friend David. He uses all the time. It is a cool guitar.

I also built one final tele body from an ash body blank I bought from tonewoodexperts.com

It is a heavy piece of wood. It came out great. I had a neck from Warmoth guitars. The neck is a baseball bat.

Finally I created my own body design. I took inspiration from the telecasters I built, Tommy Castro’s number one, and my Texas Toast Challenger X. Up to this point I had been using nitro lacquer on the guitars. I wanted to do something different on the “Heart” guitar. My wife noticed this body has a heart below the bridge. I used ebony grain filler and sanded most of it off. It was a risk. The wood soaked up the grain filler.